Key Takeaways from COP28 and the Cryosphere Pavilion in Dubai

We would like to extend a warm welcome to everyone who is joining the “Cryosphere Capsules” newsletter for the first time after COP28! This message marks the return of the Cryosphere Capsules, a weekly email that provides plain-language summaries for policy makers of the latest developments in cryosphere and climate science. This week, we catch up with an important pre-COP28 paper; as well as one making creative use of octopus DNA leading to some sobering conclusions about future collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

In the Capsules, we will also feature side event recordings from the COP28 Cryosphere Pavilion. We hosted more than 60 side events in Dubai from November 30 – December 12, giving the floor to scientific researchers, ministers, members of Indigenous communities, youth representatives and beyond who all underscored the need for urgent action to protect global communities from the consequences of cryosphere loss.

COP28 made clear that many nations in polar, high mountain, downstream, coastal and low-lying regions are gravely concerned about the global impacts of cryosphere loss. Despite their voices in the negotiations, however, there is only one direct reference to cryosphere in the final Global Stocktake (GST) text. Most worryingly, this reference does not make any connection to urgency, implications of intensifying changes observed today or their long-term impacts.

Although strong references to 1.5°C ultimately remained in the COP28 GST decision, its lack of urgency and connection to irreversible impacts from the Earth’s cryosphere means that the text remains weak on needed mitigation, including concrete steps and mechanisms to transition away from fossil fuels with sufficient speed. As a result of the 2050 focus for mitigation, not enough emphasis is placed on meeting the 2030 goalposts that the IPCC says is required to meet those 2050 goals. With no course correction in sight, this de facto will result in more overshoot of 1.5°C than the cryosphere can take, with devastating impacts that ironically are only noted in the Loss and Damage section of the GST. The science is clear: these impacts can and must be avoided by ending the fossil fuel era with concrete, in-time steps.

Leading up to COP28, more than 1,000 cryosphere scientists signed a call to action urging policy makers and world leaders to increase ambition by not just emphasizing 1.5°C as the lower limit of the Paris Agreement, but defining the upper Paris limit (“well below 2°C”) as “1.5°C alone”. Their Call to Action states that the global impacts and damage for each tenth of a degree higher, especially for longer periods of time, will grow well beyond the limits of adaptation due to the cryosphere’s response: from ice sheets to glaciers, snow, permafrost, sea ice and polar oceans. The full list of signatures can be viewed here: https://iccinet.org/cryosphere-call-to-cop28/

We want to highlight the tremendous work of the cryosphere scientists and early career researchers who assisted at the Cryosphere Pavilion this year, equipping on-the-ground negotiators with the latest science during both weeks of COP! Thank also to everyone who stopped by the Pavilion exhibits or side events. It was a pleasure to meet many of you in person, and we look forward to staying in contact in 2024, as we begin heading towards strengthened NDCs at COP29 in Baku.

Welcome back!
Pam Pearson, Executive Director and Amy Imdieke, Outreach Director, ICCI